CES: LaCie unveils new hard drives, LCD display

LaCie on Monday introduced five new products including desktop and portable hard drives and a new LCD display aimed at professionals. Some products are available today; others are coming later this month and in February.

The LaCie d2 Quadra is a redesigned quadruple-interface desktop hard drive. It features USB 2.0, FireWire 400, FireWire 800 and external Serial ATA (eSATA) connections. Featuring a large surface area, the external drive dissipates heat without needing a fan. It's available now in capacities ranging from 320GB to 1 terabyte (TB), at prices starting at $189.

The Little Big Disk Quadra is a quad-interface drive designed for portability. It's fast enough to handle video editing and digital content creation on the road, but sports an aluminum heat-sink design that cools without needing a fan. It's available now in 400GB and 500GB capacities with either 7200 or 5400 RPM drives inside, starting at $475.

The LaCinema Premier is a USB 2.0 multimedia hard drive that you can connect directly to a television for instant playback of movies, photos and music you've copies via USB 2.0 from your Mac or PC. It comes in 500GB, 750GB and 1TB capacities. It also optical digital audio output for surround sound support. Playback is managed using a remote control that adjusts an on-screen menu. It's available now and priced starting at $229.

The Big Extreme+ eSATA and USB 2.0 will be available in 1TB, 1.5TB and 2TB capacities. Bundled with EMC Retrospect for Mac OS X and Windows, the external storage system can reach transfer speeds of up to 125 megabytes per minute using eSATA, when configured as a RAID 0 array. It's coming in February, starting at $360.

The 324 LCD Display is a 24-inch monitor that utilizes Super Patterned Vertical Alignment (S-PVA), a display technology which boasts high contrast ratios and enhanced color fidelity (92 percent NTSC gamut). It embeds 10-bit gamma correction and features a 16:10 aspect ratio (LaCie didn't specify the resolution, however). It's coming at the end of January for $1,050.

LaCie's Web site had not been updated with information about all the new devices as Macworld posted this article.